


More Than One Hell

by mantra4ia



Series: More Than One Hell [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angel Wings, F/M, I would never lie to you, Lucifer's Fall, Lucifer's ring, Protective Lucifer, Work In Progress, favorite brother, imagine, what family truly means
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-08 00:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11070273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mantra4ia/pseuds/mantra4ia
Summary: Lucifer regains consciousness (post S2 finale cliffhanger) with no idea of where he is or how he got there, but by the wings on his back he has the strong impression that he is not alone. (Series in Progress)





	1. Trading One Hell for Another

**Author's Note:**

> I know where I'm going, I'm not sure how to get there. But I know it involves feelings.

"Where am I?" Lucifer's thoughts collected in the dirt as he lifted himself from the hot graveled sands. With every turn his eyes beheld more and more of...nothing. The occasional sandstone shelf, an odd whirlwind of dust, and miserable looking foliage here and there that was either dead or dying. As perplexed as Lucifer was about how he got here and why he was poorly clothed but not quite naked (naked he would understand, he'd woken up hazily from a raging party several times before, wearing only his god given and forsaken grin), that singular pervasive curiosity endured. "Where on earth am I?" For a moment he was hopeful that if he stared long enough is a single direction that he could just make out the demarcation of the Vegas strip, but the more he witnessed, the clearer a whisper in his thoughts became. " _Wrong question_ ," it warned him.

Only then did he become aware that he felt quite...well, for lack of a better word,  _human_. The air pressed in hot, dry, and miserable around him. As Lucifer glanced down at his hands, the white and cracking skin around his palms and knuckles intrigued him. After a moment this became something of a minor annoyance. His skin itched. He flexed his muscles to relieve an underlying strain, a discomfort he would have developed under more welcome circumstances of a warm bed, a creative position held at length, and the company of a comfortable stranger. Lucifer tried to imagine that scenario into existence to replace the arid reality of the unforgiving desert ground, but the strain did not ease as though all of his matter were wound too tightly. His skin seemed to be shriveling two sizes too small, and licking his blistered lips he found them not only salty but scabbed and tasting of stale blood.

"Right, this is going to get old in a hurry," Lucifer sighed to himself. " _Tell me about it,_ " his thoughts betrayed, but only for a moment as his dulled and peevish senses were quickly occupied by another disturbance. His feet were on fire! Not literally on fire of course, but beginning to shoot fiery pain through his entire body as Lucifer sprinted across the molten expanse toward the only bit of shade he could see beneath the skeleton of a tree's corpse. The ground there was not exactly cool, but anything less than scorching was a welcome relief as he realized minor mortal annoyances were beginning to coalesce into proper grievances. "You've got to be kidding me, this is ridiculous!" He shouted into the ether, sure that somewhere beyond this scenic nothingness his Father was sitting back with a bucket of popcorn watching the show. The more Lucifer thought about it, a kind of uncontrolled fit took hold and he laughed. He was the genuine devil, the engineer of a world beyond worlds of torture and agony. He had weathered far worse and would not be defeated by a mound of boiling dirt! Of the remaining clothes he did have, Lucifer did a quick inventory and found his cell phone with a smile and a fist pump, as if he'd won the game.

" _Haha_ ," his mind echoed back, but not in the same light-spirited way, planting the seed of doubt in Lucifer's determination. Opening his phone, he discovered there was no service at all.

"What sort of twisted plan is this Father?" he shouted from the ground. "I've lived centuries in a hell all my own, this one makes no difference to me! It's foolish!"

" _That's not the only foolish thing_ " Lucifer's maligned thoughts answered him as a new sensation of thirst distracted him: not for a stiff drink, but I needy, cloying thirst for water.

"I will leave this place, mark my words."

 _"Isn't that what **these** are for?" _ It was only then that his thoughts strayed from his desires for shade and water and rest, to something far worse. A cold, clammy panic began coursing it's way from his stomach through to his bones and for the first time out of his periphery, Lucifer observed his shadow. More full and broad and terrible than it should be.

"No, no no no no no!" Lucifer began to spiral downward in his thoughts just as his newfound wings, nearly of their own volition, spiraled him upward into the air. "This can't be happening." He circled around the sky trying to find Maze or any other soul who might be able to help him amputate these festering cancers, but finding no one he resolved to tear them off himself.

" _Oh if you could see yourself, it's hilarious, you look like a dog chasing it's tail!_ " Lucifer froze and almost as quickly his wings seized up and he plummeted. Right before he hit the ground, the irony of the fall hit him, then the pain of the impact, and finally the realization that someone had hijacked his inner monologue. And his intuition told him it was the same someone who brought him to this...for lack of a better word _hell hole._

Lucifer chose his next threat, nay his next promise very carefully with escalating bravado. "I give you credit, whoever you are. Normally I would say 'you have no idea who you're dealing with' but given the nature your ambush and the sheer strength it would take to render me unconscious, you must have come prepared to face the devil. So come on then!"

 _"Actually it didn't take much to knock you out, only the right leverage,"_ the whisper spoke again.

Lucifer spun round, surveying every possible place to hide for his nefarious opponent. "That's a neat little trick, stealing my thoughts for a voice. Are you mute?"

Silence.

"Haha, very funny." Lucifer said, still mildly amused that he was talking to himself in the middle of a desert.

_"I thought so, humor does run in my family."_

"I'm sure Dan would find this a great inspiration for a skit at the improv club. Did he put you up to this little ding-dong-ditch Lucifer bit?"

_"Daniel? Hardly, though he is one of the more amusing characters to have watched all this time. But Trixie, now she is by far my favorite."_

The echoing of the voice was steadily growing louder in Lucifer's head, like an out of sync recording. Since his eyes couldn't find the source of this nagging phantom, he closed them to the baking sun, and throwing his head back to the sky with his arms outstretched, he laughed. "Ah, 20 questions, love that game. Careful though, I could stretch it out for all eternity. Better to show yourself and save the torment."

_"I've caught in your first lie, 20 questions isn't your favorite. You much prefer Deal or No Deal. Or better yet, playing Detective"_

"The Devil doesn't lie."

_"But he's perfected the art of omitting the whole truth, hasn't he?"_

"Look who's talking?!" Lucifer rang into the void. "Literally speaking inside my head to hide your face."

_"The apple doesn't fall far from the--"_

"Enough!" Lucifer shouted. "I draw the line at being forced to listen to derivative biblical puns. Show yourself or I'll--"

 _"Oh I can't wait to hear how this turns out."_ Lucifer could hear the sarcasm dripping off every word, and then the spark of an idea came to him.

"Hold on, you sound familiar."

" _In what way?_ " The voice began to play with pitch and tone and cadence. " _Clearly if I'm in your head I can sound however I please,_ " the voice trailed off into something neither distinctly masculine nor feminine, yet deeply unsettling for all of Lucifer's nerves, like a visceral hum just behind the ear that sent convulsive waves down his spine.

"It's not your voice, it's the manner in which you speak. I should know, I'm the master of tongues--"

_"Says you."_

"And by the feel of it you sound an awful lot like--"

"What?" asked the voice, except it had changed. Not only did it definitely belong to a woman now, but it no longer echoed. It wasn't in his head. This time the breath of it stirred on his neck.

"--Me!" Lucifer turned in full certainty, eyes gleaming red, of who he was going to face. But the rest of his words died in his throat, and he stumbled back half a step as they choked him. Only after Lucifer gave a hard swallow did the woman before him laugh. "Master of tongues indeed, did you swallow yours?"

" _Chloe_?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you reading for mentions of Deckerstar, I have a basic outline for them in this story but you'll have to wait till part 2 or 3 of the series. I think I'll get there in the end.  
> Also, heads up, things are going to get worse for Lucifer before they get better.


	2. New World, Same Shoes, Old Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer has always been tempest tossed in the middle of Mum and Dad. Once again confronted with a choice between the two, Lucifer must face the consequences to his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italics indicate thoughts or empathetic telepathy.

"Look at him dance," the Detective said in awed fascination. "How long I've waited to witness this, and how worthwhile! I could only imagine how audibly your mind would process this puzzle without Uriel's help. Oh Lucifer, I could play you like your beloved piano!"

"This is impossible. **You** are not **her**!" Lucifer declared.

"No no no, don't be boring! I've waited too long for you to play the dimwit. That expression on your face when you thought for a second that Chloe knew who you were all along. I'm not sure what made it more satisfying: the shock that you, the genuine Devil, had never truly been able to keep your secret, all while you suffered under the weight of it, or the bonafide disbelief that your own deepest desire had been fulfilled. I've lived too long without gratification like that. Thank you."

"Who are you?"

"You're good at this 20 questions game, but then so is your Detective. Why don't you start by figuring out where we are, and you might answer your own question."

"Stop using her voice!" Lucifer closed the gap between them, intent on shaking the truth from this doppelganger, before he was resolutely slapped by the back of her hand and toppled with the force of a felled tree. The cuts of his blistered lip reopened, the only oasis that flowed freely within the bare surroundings.

"What a satisfying human exchange!" The Detective said. "Ever since I saw Chloe do that I've always wanted to test it myself, but I had a theory that the backhand was a more efficient slap and I was right!" She said with an almost child-like glee. "Can we try that again?"

"I see you're still as strong as me... **Mum** _._ "

"What?!" At this the Detective advanced with nightmarish speed, as if to clear a soccer ball in the shape of Lucifer's head. "Did I hit you that hard? Don't be stupid." But instead of striking Lucifer again - which he braced for, one arm shielding his manly whatnots and the other covering his face - the seething woman with Chloe's face strong-armed him to his feet. "You can't have seriously imagined I sound like her? Truly? God, what a forsaken idea. Though I suppose I ought to be giving you partial credit."

"Credit for what exactly?" Lucifer's head was pounding with the mounting implications.

"I told you to figure out where. we. are!" She punctuated every word like a sharpened accusation. "So where are we, Luc-i-fer?" She teased.

"I thought you were Mum but you're not-"

"Quite so."

"Yet she matters to this, somehow she plays a part-"

"Exactly."

"Except she can't be because I cast her into the void and threw away the key!" He bellowed in arrogance.

By stark and chilling contrast, the voice the was so like Chloe's parried Lucifer in dulcet tones, just above the volume of wind-brushed leaves. "With explicit instruction that she do what?"

Lucifer was stunned into silence. "That she start fresh without Father, and build a universe all her own."

"Welcome to the summer cottage Lucifer! The first world from the twisted mind of a divine goddess, not quite complete without a welcome mat but still, you don't have any shoes so I don't anticipate a problem. She made everything here, though your wings were a bit of a plot twist, residual energy from the creative spark I suppose. Shall we give this place a name? I've always favored something with the flavor of matriarchy. Perhaps Antigone, from the Greeks. That's nostalgic."

"If this is her planet, then I want to speak with her."

Staring at the impostor, Lucifer observed the slow change, an overcast shadow of worn-out patience, though her voice tried to maintain a lecture-like indulgence. "Don't you think, can't you see that maybe, quite possibly, she's just the tiniest bit preoccupied?"

"With what?"

" **ME**!" The Detective who wasn't the Detective screamed with such an undertone of malice that the whole world held it's breath in silence waiting to behold her next move. "TWENTY QUESTIONS IS OVER. Take a hard look around and tell me what you see!"

And for the first time Lucifer stopped looking haphazardly about at all the little details to catch his fancy and beheld the larger picture. All around him, everything was unified by a singularity.

"Ahhhh," she exhaled, hostility quelled and jubilance returning in playful waves. "There it is. There were so many things I could have said, slips I could have given you. But that would ruin a splendid reunion."

"That trick with your voice in my head-"

"A gift from God, if I'm honest."

"When I mentioned Mum?" 

She shuddered. "It's a backhanded compliment to be compared with your parents, particularly our mother."

"And the proverbial apple?"

"Now that was a genuine Freudian slip, how you didn't catch that I'll never know."

Everything in their surroundings spoke the truth, and Lucifer finally comprehended that this world was touched by, nay, steeped in Death. "Azrael..." As he grew up from the ground, a loud ovation of desires began to clamor inside of him. He was angry and tired and furious at being abducted before one of the most important moments of his life. He wanted to ring her neck! But above all other desires, the one which emerged most strongly took hold of his entire body. He swooped down, encircling wings and all, wrapping his sister in a hug. "Azrael, you're safe!" 

She returned the embrace in full. "It's good to see you too, Lucifer. But why would you ever worry about me? It's my job to look out for you."

"When Uriel confronted me with your blade, I thought the only way he must have taken it was over your cold corpse." At this, her face turned grave and down to the ground. Lucifer slowly unfolded his wings, allowing her to step out of the light and into the shade of the gnarled tree. Her face obscured, Lucifer couldn't be certain as whether he saw her cry, but he was stricken with painful awareness that something terrible had befallen between Azrael and Uriel. Regardless of his strength and compulsion, he could not draw it out of her before she was ready to speak. And so, sullenly, he changed the subject. "How did you get here?"

"Everywhere that life exists I have dominion. Father ensured it. Universal boundaries are no hindrance to my travels."

"The same can't be easily said for me. How did you possibly pull me through the void when I dismantled the sword and disposed of the key?"

"Thanks for stealing my dagger for that ritual by the way," Azrael interrupted and dodged the question.

"Don't put the blame on me, that cardinal act of theft was all Uriel's doing."

"So holding onto the dagger rather than returning it to me vindicates your complicit guilt?"

"Quit putting words in my mouth!"

"Would you rather I put _more in your head?_ "

"Stop splitting feathers over semantics, my point is we can't possibly be where you say we are because you couldn't pull me with you across the universe without the key."

Azrael threw up her hands to their Father. "Dad, he used to be smarter than this. Lucifer, how many times has Chloe locked you in that police car of hers?"

"Several."

"And chucked you out into the street while adjusting her rear view mirror?

"More than I need to innumerate."

"To solve that problem, your basest instinct was to copy her keys. You may think you're clever, little brother, but I shouldn't have to remind you; you borrowed that move from my book."

"You copied Amenadiel's key to the flaming sword?" Indeed, she toggled at some concealed strand at her throat that must have been a duplicate.

"Don't act so shocked and eager Lucifer, it doesn't make the words of that dusty tome any less true. Amenadiel received the authentic key; he is truly Father's favorite son, or at least he was at the time. To be honest I don't remember if you were even made when Father gave him that necklace. For whatever that's worth, you were always my favorite brother.

But when Father gave Amenadiel the key to **my** blade-"

"Is that jealously Azra?"

"You would know, Luci. Put yourself in my shoes a moment and imagine."

"That's a bit difficult all things considered," Lucifer looked down at his worn feet, only to find they were shod with new loafers, and he was clothed in a fresh white linen suit.

 _You're such a cliche_  she muttered into the background of Lucifer's thoughts _._ "Better, Beelzebub, king-of-literal-interpretation?" She placated, just barely withholding a roll of her eyes. _Would you like horns and a tail to go with that?_

"Lovely, much better. If you had that kind of influence over reality all along, why have I been standing half-naked this entire time?"

"Well I was debating between that and full naked - Don't give me that mortified look, brother," Lucifer's face was turning red around the edges, which lit up a rare smile on his sister's face. "You're not the shy one and it's nothing I haven't seen before. I thought I was being kind. Didn't think you could stand to dirty a perfectly good suit." At that, divinely timed, a tumble weed stirred on the wind and hit Lucifer in the face. "I swear I had nothing to do with that," Azrael giggle-snorted ever so slightly in an innocent way that reminded him of the real Chloe, "cross my heart-"

Lucifer quickly sobered the tone. "Considering that you're wearing another woman's face, it would mean a great deal to me if you DON'T finish that remark."

Azrael took the reigns of their deviant conversation and went on with her story. "Father gave away the key to what is mine, the only sister in a heavenly host of brothers, to the most righteous and aggravating among them. Don't tell me that under the circumstances you wouldn't have devised some insurance; you with your semantic loop holes and your Pentecostal coins."

Lucifer measured his reply. "Though it pains me to admit it, this is one time in all creation I agree with Father. Of us all, even you, Amenadiel was the wisest choice to safeguard a key. Trustworthy, loyal, he is the eldest..."

The air around Azrael visibly shifted, and for the first time, instead of seeing Chloe, he saw the most merciful and stern power of Death. "Amenadiel may be the eldest brother, but don't imagine for a moment that he was the first! Before you were even a twinkle in the eye of our Father, I was grown and out in the world on my own!"

"How did you even get the key from Dad?"

Her temper twisted its shape then, and though she was no less foreboding, Azrael no longer seemed ancient and forever. "How would you have done it?" Lucifer had a special admiration for Azrael, but was loathe to admit a twinge of sour envy that hers were the most human eyes among all the angels. Even now through a facade that wasn't her own, they positively shimmered with youthful mischief.

"I would have...picked the old man's pocket."

"And that's why I love you, Lucifer. Hereditary genius."

"But of all places, you didn't need to bring me to a sweltering slab if all you wanted was a family reunion. I could have set you up with every luxury in LA. Stay for a week, a century, I could give you a grand tour."

"While seeing you again is what I most desired, it's not the only reason we need to talk. This place provides a certain privacy from Father's eavesdropping because the universe is newborn, still accelerating outward, time passing faster here than across the void. Our remarks can hardly be heard by anyone, worldly or divine."

This insight set all of Lucifer's panic and neurosis in motion. How long had he been here, relatively speaking, away from Maze and Linda and Chloe? Had Linda recovered, at this moment were Maze or Amenadiel trying to find him, had Chloe gotten his last message? His insides lurched and for once he prayed that she hadn't. If Chloe believed him, that he was ready to move forward and tell her the whole truth, then what must she think of him now. If he'd been gone an extended amount of time, surely she would know that he was in trouble. But doubt overshadowed reason, as Lucifer spiraled downward toward imaging the worst. The detective wouldn't doubt his sincerity...she wouldn't think that he'd turned on his heels and fled AGAIN...leaving her abandoned for weeks AGAIN. Would she? The rest of his friends wouldn't let her hope waiver. But with each affirmation his inner monologue grew less confident.

"Why have you insinuated yourself in Mum's world?" 

"I told you-"

"Yes I knoooow, privacy, but you've conveniently left out what for-"  

"I need your help."

"-and why you've taken it upon yourself to burn the house down around you!"

"The irony coming off of you Luci. You've been in this cosmic business long enough to know better. _You don't cause sin_ anymore than _I cause death._ "

"THIS WHOLE WORLD begs to differ, sister! We are surrounded by nothing but dirt and death. Up until I crashed the party, you and Mum were the only ones here and I doubt very much that she wanted to destroy her own home."

"I have influence over death the nearer I am to the blade, I can't help that brother. The weaker the force of a living thing, the more potent my influence, but I don't kill. Look around you, I'd love to be a florist but that's not how I was made."

Though he knew Azrael spoke the truth, Lucifer couldn't help but dig a little deeper at his older sister in an 'I'm not touching you' kind of way. "And yet you seem to be enjoying yourself."

"Absolutely, and I could say that same thing for you, Samael."

Coming from her lips in Chloe's voice, the name sent needles through Lucifer's chest. He'd forgotten how hopeful his name sounded coming from Azrael, but it seized him with fear to imagine how Chloe would call out that name, under what circumstances she might realize the depths she didn't know. Would she call him a liar? Coward? Fraud? The more he thought of her, wondering how long exactly he'd been away, a sense of urgency overran his patience. "If you have a point, Azrael, let's hear it."

"You spend your existence stirring up the desires in the hearts of less respectable men, you take holidays in LA and Vegas, though I doubt you've ever paid a visit to the UN and inspired their desire for peace or refugee compassion. You can abdicate your responsibility for sin all you like, but your choices make you quite culpable for chaos. Before you judge my actions, I suggest you measure that noose around your own neck. I think you'll find it a close fit."

"But you're destroying Mum's chance at happiness, and what's worse your asking my help while you do it, and for what!?"

"To smoke her out Lucifer, don't you see? I brought you here because Mum will show in full form for you. Since you sent her into exile she won't reveal herself to me. I've got nothing but time, I can wait millennia undoing everything she creates here until she's too tired to resist, she manifests herself, and I can finally take her home! But I wouldn't have to if you just ask her nicely! If you welcome her back, I won't have to wait here watching her whole world go to dust."

Lucifer couldn't help but run his face through his parched hands in exasperation. "This is madness Azra, do you realize what you're asking? If Mum ever returns to Dad's universe, her hunger for family will never be sated. It's more fervent than the hunger of hell-bound souls. If she seeks out Father, there will be a war. Humanity may not survive, we might not survive. And you will be responsible for all those lost lives. Is that what you really want?" 

"Heavens no, I'm punching too many hours already. That's why I need Mum to come back with us and reunite with our Father."

"Run that by me again, I'm not fluent in insanity. Better still, take some time off, I'm sure you've accrued a few decades for your service by now."

"Not every celestial being in your position can take a vacation whenever wanderlust inspires them, you arrogant ass."

"Oooooh, say that again," Lucifer practically buzzed with delight. "You really are starting to sound like the Detective, well done."

 "Can you even comprehend the horror of a world without death, brother? No one else can do what I do."

"Now who's arrogant? I used to believe that too as the ruler of Hell, but things seem to be getting along fine without me."

Azrael approached Lucifer now, the closest she'd come to him since their embrace. It was the strangest off-putting thing, looking at her and seeing Chloe, but more troubling still the kind of vulnerable fatigue she allowed him to see. It hurt in the same way that seeing an 80s action hero defeated hurt, and made him wonder if perhaps immortality had allowed him to take certain things for granted, family among them. "Lucifer, I'm so old now, I've been around long enough to know when there is an imbalance in creation. Don't you feel it?"

"What exactly?"

"Life and light are going out. I don't know when, but with a helping hand from humanity we are edging near the point where the damage cannot be undone and I can't hold it back any longer." Lucifer let the idea ruminate and ferment in his thoughts as she continued. "Barring a celestial resurgence of lifegiving current, there will soon be nothing but death. That's why Mother and Father need to come together. There's hope for them, if not to reunite at least to make amends. They can do more together than each of them alone and then when energy between them heals this festering wound in the universe then I can finally, perhaps take a lunch break."

"Would you listen to yourself, you sound like you've thrown back the Jose Rivera* kool-aide. Humans go a bit mad from time to time, Dad only knows why. Things might look grim in the Death Department a while, but eventually the dust settles and life goes on. You have nothing to fear." He tried to reason with his sister once more, but she seemed to retreat into her own thoughts. "I know how you love experiments, but you're living in a dream Azrael. Even if what you're saying is true, and I think you're overestimating the gravity of the situation, you forget. I've tried the parent trap, it doesn't work. Mum and Dad will never reunite long enough for anything good. If I was a betting man, I'd say she'd start by taking his eye out and quoting Hammurabi just for spite."

His sister sighed, "I know you don't believe that. I know because you're not the only one who understands desire. You want the same thing that I do. You believe they should have another chance."

"It doesn't matter what I believe or what I want."

"I think that's all that matters. You know why I brought you here to Mum's universe? I wanted just one person I trust on my side-"

"Join the club, we meet Monday nights. I'm sorry Azrael, I really am, but I won't support this. I can't be stuck in the middle anymore! I'm done being a pawn. From Mum and Dad, I've accepted it. But I never expected to be used by you as well."

Lucifer might as well have stabbed Azrael with her own dagger and twisted the hilt, such was the look of betrayal and anguish on her face. "I understand. I hope given time you will see things differently," she resigned before she shored up her walls and was once again an unstoppable force. Although she was still standing there, as plain as he could see, Lucifer felt her go. He no longer had her full attention because she was every where, all at once, all the time. A sentinel, that by virtue of being in all things, wasn't really there. It was just a glimpse of her role in Father's plan, and for once Lucifer could understand that there was nothing in her job to be envious about.

"Az, don't. I'm-"

He wanted to ask her to forget her plan, to come with him, but he hesitated and she flinched. She only did that when a death was particularly untimely. "Barring your help, little brother, there's only one thing I need from you before you go." _Your ring, I want it back._

It was Lucifer's turn to twist in anguish. As he looked down at his hand, to the black Obsidian ring, a fiery possessiveness took hold. "Well, you can't always get what you want."

"But I _will_ get what I need."

"This ring is mine, you gave it to me, it was a gift. You can't just ask for it back!"

"Now I think you're beginning to understand the protectiveness I feel about my dagger-"

"Azra," Lucifer said, trying hard to keep his voice from shaking. "Do you even remember when you gave this to me?"

"I do," she said coolly. "Right before Father cast you down and told me that we would never see you again."

"You said that you trusted me to protect it at any cost-"

"Samael..." Azrael couldn't bear to recall that day a moment longer.

"-That wherever I was, as long as I had this ring, you would find me - "

She snapped. "The ring is worthless!"

"It's not valuable to me for what it's worth!" Lucifer's reflection fell and Azrael could see his true form, exposed and radiantly in despair. "It's valuable because we swore on it to always end up united. WE HAD A DEAL!"

"WE HAD A PROMISE Brother! That matters more to me than one of your pitiless deals a thousand fold. I watched you fall and burn from a the peak of a mountain and cried to all who would listen that I would never go back to the silver city until I found a way to bring you with me, welcomed back with grace. I have never been back, I have not seen a single one of them" she said sharply as she recalled the faces of the seraphs, dominions, angels, their family with heartache, "save Uriel who sought me out of his own accord. I wandered countless existences trying to break into hell just to see you. I kept my end of the promise, I searched for you-" _and what did you do? Take a delightful vacation. In all creation, I need you now and you let me down_.

If Lucifer could disappear into the very air itself, he would do so a heartbeat, that was how low and hollow he felt. "Fine, if it means so little to you, you can have your bloody ring back when you take that dagger you keep behind your back and sever these wings!" Lucifer tried to work the ring from his finger, but for all his struggles it would not give an inch.

"That's not how this works. You're right in that way. I can't simply ask for the ring, what Death gives I have no power to take away. _You_ can give it back, but it must be freely, no deals, no offers, no attachments. Besides, I would never take your wings. You may see them as a burden now, but that is not all they mean to you. And sooner than you think you will depend on them."

"Then the answer is no! I've never taken this ring off since the day you gave it to me, and I'll not start today. Mark my words Azrael, I'd like nothing more than to throw it in your face, but I know you want it for something more than just to spite me. My deals do not come free."

"Very well." In a flash Azrael took out the her blade and for a blink of time Lucifer thought perhaps she would grant his wish after all. Instead, she carved an elegant slash in the skin of the universe. "Time for you to go."

"What, that's it, you're not going to stop me?" Lucifer asked in a moment's hesitation not knowing what he wanted more, to go home or to be asked to stay.

"Why?-" Up until that moment, Lucifer couldn't imagine that anything could feel worse than what his Father had done to him. He was wrong. Lucifer was about to step through the void back to where he came from before Azrael continued"-when I'll see you soon."

"I swear you won't. When I walk through that void, you will never have to see me again," was all Lucifer could manage without breaking into tears. When Azrael again offered no resistance, he took a single step further and disappeared, but the void did nothing to drown out his doubts. What was worse, Azrael's disownment or that fact that (this time) he might have done something to earn it? Just as he was about to emerge from the other side of the void, a thought played across his mind, though he could not be sure whether it belonged to him or was an echo of her. _Why look like Chloe, aren't you the least bit curious?_

Azrael wasn't Chloe, she'd merely borrowed her image. And yet Lucifer was still vulnerable, not simply to Azrael's strength but to the worldly misfortunes around her. He had felt mortality again. How had she managed to do that?

But there was no more time to think on the subject as Lucifer was thrown violently back to Earth. Looking up from the ground revealed the stars and the notion that he was neither in the same place nor the same time that his sister had spirited him from. Taking in the view, Lucifer was aware that he had crash landed on his own balcony, wings and all. He'd gone so long without them that they were a struggle even to fold much less control. With determination, effort, and a healthy dose of agony, he was finally able to conceal them as he pulled himself up and slumped against the railing with exhaustion. There was not enough resistance left to stop all that he was feeling from saturating his spirit and Lucifer screamed, "What have I done to deserve this?!" and shortly thereafter, thinking of abandoning Azrael alone on a hellish rock, a second plea in a hoarse whisper followed. "What have I done?" and shortly thereafter as his thoughts filled with loss, " _what am I supposed to do?"_

Of course these questions were rhetorical, so the reply that followed made even less sense than it normally would.

"Give it time son, the wings will sort themselves out in the end."

Lucifer was home, just not the home he bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * "Jose Rivera cool-aide" refers to a short play called "Marisol" by Jose Rivera, which in a very trippy way references themes about a guardian angel, a dying God, the angels, cherubim, seraphim, principalities, dominions, etc, and their role in a war with heaven to save a dying universe.


End file.
